But the same punctilious taste which guided him so safely among the pitfalls of virtuosity and bravura soon led him beyond this entire scheme of art, which is, after all, based on the somewhat frivolous ideal of ostentation, up to the higher level of lyrical expression, based on quiet and deep personal feeling. The virtuoso was transformed into the poet. In the nocturnes, some of the études and preludes, portions even of the ballades and polonaises, and most strikingly of all in the slow movements of the concertos and sonatas, his object is no longer to dazzle his audience, but to portray subjective emotion, often of a profound earnestness and spiritual beauty. If in his early pieces he was the prestidigitator, the brother-in-art of Thalberg and Liszt, here he is the dreamer, the rhapsodist, and his nearest of kin is Robert Schumann. The largo of the B-minor Sonata is Schumannesque in its contemplativeness, its _innigkeit_, its marked note of mysticism; the funeral march in the B-flat minor Sonata equals that of the great quintet in poignancy and dignity, though it is a feminine version of what in the German composer we find expressed with more virile force. In the nocturnes the feminine quality is even more evident. Their tender beauty has a pallor, a fragility, almost an emaciation, which has often brought upon them the charge of morbidity. It is certain that in the pieces of this type Chopin has carried his fastidiousness a stage farther than in the display pieces, attaining an even greater distinction and a rarer individuality. The nocturnes and preludes, the larghettos of the two concertos, the largo of the Sonata in B-minor, and a few other things of the same sort constitute one of the few perfect manifestations of the romantic spirit in music.
There is still a third phase of Chopin's work, which some will probably consider as much higher than the lyrical phase as that is higher than the decorative. This may be called the heroic or epic phase, and is exemplified in the polonaises, the ballades, the Fantaisie, opus 49, the twelfth étude, the thirteenth nocturne, and the finale of the Sonata in B-minor.[27] A study of these works will open the eyes of any one who knows Chopin only through his virtuoso or lyrical pieces to the scope and many-sidedness of his genius. There is about them a largeness of utterance, a sustainment of mood, an intensity of emotion hardly ever degenerating into the hysterical or the sentimental, which it is strange to find in the graceful _salon_ writer, the delicate miniaturist. Yet this final quality, too, by which Chopin proves himself akin to Beethoven as well as to Thalberg and Schumann (an oddly assorted trio), is, like the others, due to his characteristic fineness of nature. It is the heroism of high breeding, the vigor of intelligence, the dignity of impeccable taste. It bespeaks a strength rather subtle than brutal--the strength of the mettlesome thoroughbred, not that of the stolid dray-horse. It is a spiritual superiority (like the technical and emotional superiority) born of distinction and nourished by exclusiveness. Even in the most virile of the polonaises, with the possible exception of the so-called "Military Polonaise," which is unique in its fresh, open-air athleticism, we feel that the power which surges through them is a nervous rather than a muscular power. Thus when he is heroic, no less than when he is gay or introspective, Chopin remains true to his slender, aquiline, subtle, aristocratic self.